And so you have a lifetime excuse not to live, a chip on your shoulder that will carry you safely to the end of your days. Without being too tough on you what I would like to say is, BE A MAN! Do you think you are the only one that has suffered loss? Take a look around. There’s a big wide world out there, it’s not all ‘good’, but it sure is not all bad, in the end it is what YOU make of it. Don’t waste another minute of your life wallowing in self pity, start living! I’m sure you have a lot to give but you won’t be able to if you continue as your own worst enemy. Now you can either be annoyed at me or sit down and have a serious discussion with yourself.

Asanta is right, you completely missed the point of my post. I am not wallowing in self-pity and I don’t need an anonymous theist telling me how to live my life. I have had a lot of joys and sorrows in life, as have we all, and in the overall scheme of things I’m better off than 90 percent of the people in the world. As for manning up, I agree with Bertrand Russell’s quote “There is something sad and even a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comforting myths.”

I don’t need bronze age myths to help me get through life: I am perfectly capable of coping with reality without such a crutch. I believe you may projecting.

My point with bringing up the story of my mother was that your God is useless in real life. Science, which you dismissed as “twice removed from ‘what is’ ” works. My father came within a few seconds of dying five years ago when he had an abdominal aneurysm burst while he was in the Billings, MT X-Ray room. A talented, scientifically educated surgeon cut him open immediately, clamped the aneurysm and saved his life. No god involved.

In fact, as soon as you say that you know ‘reality’, you define some religion, all there is left to do is give it a name.

That comes from a complete misunderstanding of science. Science is not a religion, and no good scientist claims to know reality. Scientists deal with the explanations that best fit our observations. If scientists claimed to know reality they would make no progress. Religion has had several thousand years to explain reality, and has failed miserably. It is time to move on, throw off the shackles of Medieval thinking, and join the Enlightenment.

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You cannot have a rational discussion with someone who holds irrational beliefs.

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OK, let’s try a different tact. And please this time, let’s demonstrate some mutual respect. It doesn’t matter what you call yourself, we’re all ‘created equal’ and all deserve the same respect, at least so says the US constitution - and I’m not even American!

If you think your conceptualization of ‘reality’, is reality, you are hallucinating. Your conceptualization, your ‘science’ is twice removed from ‘what is’. So please, don’t talk or act like your version or conceptualization of ‘reality’, is what is - it is not. What is, is not reduceable to a concept or idea. If you say that as an ‘atheist’, you see the world ‘as it is’, you are kidding yourself. In fact, as soon as you say that you know ‘reality’, you define some religion, all there is left to do is give it a name.

I would suggest you use a different “tack” (not tact).

1) You urge mutual respect and then proceed to call science a “hallucination” (mental disorder).
2) I submit your conceptualization of God is 2000 years removed from what we now are beginning to understand “what is”.
3) I submit that you have reduced “what is” to the concept or idea of a God, without possessing any actual knowledge of God.
4) Your assumption that both atheists and scientists are trying to establish or define a religion, proves that (presently) you do not possess the necessary ability to think “critically” or see the need for “knowledge”.
5) Your posit claims that God is “what is”. In science “what is” is that which we can observe, measure, and can be quantified (proved). Theism has none of these requirements. You just believe what you have been told (from heresay, thrice removed, and without any proof) by “uneducated” people who lived 2000 years ago, and which cannot be observed, measured, or quantified.

I submit, that you are placing your faith in a hallucination and respect only others who have this same faith. Your credo, “I have faith in a hallucination, don’t confuse me with facts”.

My faster reply would be that the OP’s argument is self defeating. His argument comes down to “The reality is, no one can possibly know what reality is.”

But I doubt he’s even still around.

This was exactly what I was thinking the whole time. He killed himself before getting out of the driveway…

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Don’t get set into one form, adapt it and build your own, and let it grow, be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless — like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; You put water into a bottle it becomes the bottle; You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

You don’t have to believe in “God” in order to suspect (SUSPECT, not believe) that there is more to “reality” than can be described by the equations of physics.

You just have to - for example - listen to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony through stereo headphones.

Theflyingsorcerer.

I was a musician and have had occasion to inspired play. Never did I feel “divinely” inspired. Nor was Einstein divinely inspired.
However, ironically, the Inquisition was “divinely” inspired as were the Crusades, Jihad, and millions of innocent people suffered at the hands of Divinely inspired people. Do you really want to cite people’s actions as being divinely inspired?

This just occurred to me.
Theists must have extremely low selfesteem and thereby also reduce the esteem of others (maintaining equality). They are taught “original sin”, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”, that “knowledge” is intrinsically evil. All these dogmas are designed to make the believer completely mentally and morally dependent on scripture and I would venture to say, less creatively inspired. Especially in areas which are taboo (forbidden from knowledge or action). Thus when someone does something remarkebly creative (and theistically acceptable), it is reduced to being divinely inspired, without giving credit to the “selfinspired” genius who created the masterpiece.
I submit that most “divinely inspired creations” are created by atheists and agnostics, who have “faith” in their own mental ability to interpret their observations, understanding, and in the area of Art, present their interpretive, self-inspired visions in artistic masterpieces.
Instead of admitting we are our own god, theists reduce or take away the one single greatest difference which sets us apart from other animals. “our own Divine Intelligence”. It is almost insulting.

This just occurred to me.
Theists must have extremely low selfesteem and thereby also reduce the esteem of others (maintaining equality). They are taught “original sin”, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”, that “knowledge” is intrinsically evil. All these dogmas are designed to make the believer completely mentally and morally dependent on scripture and I would venture to say, less creatively inspired. Especially in areas which are taboo (forbidden from knowledge or action). Thus when someone does something remarkebly creative (and theistically acceptable), it is reduced to being divinely inspired, without giving credit to the “selfinspired” genius who created the masterpiece.
I submit that most “divinely inspired creations” are created by atheists and agnostics, who have “faith” in their own mental ability to interpret their observations, understanding, and in the area of Art, present their interpretive, self-inspired visions in artistic masterpieces.
Instead of admitting we are out own god, theists reduce or take away the one single greatest difference which sets us apart from other animals. “our own Divine Intelligence”. It is almost insulting.

I disagree with much of what you say, but I do agree that it is a shame when god is given credit for the hard work and risk taking of individual people.

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I’m atheist, not agnostic. To say that god is unknowable is to say that god is.

This just occurred to me.
Theists must have extremely low selfesteem and thereby also reduce the esteem of others (maintaining equality). They are taught “original sin”, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions”, that “knowledge” is intrinsically evil. All these dogmas are designed to make the believer completely mentally and morally dependent on scripture and I would venture to say, less creatively inspired. Especially in areas which are taboo (forbidden from knowledge or action). Thus when someone does something remarkebly creative (and theistically acceptable), it is reduced to being divinely inspired, without giving credit to the “selfinspired” genius who created the masterpiece.
I submit that most “divinely inspired creations” are created by atheists and agnostics, who have “faith” in their own mental ability to interpret their observations, understanding, and in the area of Art, present their interpretive, self-inspired visions in artistic masterpieces.
Instead of admitting we are out own god, theists reduce or take away the one single greatest difference which sets us apart from other animals. “our own Divine Intelligence”. It is almost insulting.

I disagree with much of what you say, but I do agree that it is a shame when god is given credit for the hard work and risk taking of individual people.

Yes and failure is always laid at the doorstep of the person, not god, unless it is one of god’s “mysterious ways”. Convenient.

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Art is the creation of that which evokes an emotional response, leading to thoughts of the noblest kind.W4U

You don’t have to believe in “God” in order to suspect (SUSPECT, not believe) that there is more to “reality” than can be described by the equations of physics.

You just have to - for example - listen to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony through stereo headphones.

Theflyingsorcerer.

I was a musician and have had occasion to inspired play. Never did I feel “divinely” inspired. Nor was Einstein divinely inspired.
However, ironically, the Inquisition was “divinely” inspired as were the Crusades, Jihad, and millions of innocent people suffered at the hands of Divinely inspired people. Do you really want to cite people’s actions as being divinely inspired?

You’re completely missing my point.

Seems to me that “divinely inspired” means “inspired by God”. I specifically said you don’t need to believe in God. You don’t need “God” at all.

Let me try to make it a little more clear. There is NO necessity for there to be a “God”, for there to be levels of reality beyond those described by physics. OK? THERE IS PROBABLY NO GOD, BUT OTHER LEVELS OF “REALITY” EXIST.

Theflyingsorcerer.

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“Truly I tell you, he who seeks, shall find. And sometimes, he shall wish he hadn’t.”

You don’t have to believe in “God” in order to suspect (SUSPECT, not believe) that there is more to “reality” than can be described by the equations of physics.

You just have to - for example - listen to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony through stereo headphones.

Theflyingsorcerer.

I was a musician and have had occasion to inspired play. Never did I feel “divinely” inspired. Nor was Einstein divinely inspired.
However, ironically, the Inquisition was “divinely” inspired as were the Crusades, Jihad, and millions of innocent people suffered at the hands of Divinely inspired people. Do you really want to cite people’s actions as being divinely inspired?

You’re completely missing my point.

Seems to me that “divinely inspired” means “inspired by God”. I specifically said you don’t need to believe in God. You don’t need “God” at all.

Let me try to make it a little more clear. There is NO necessity for there to be a “God”, for there to be levels of reality beyond those described by physics. OK? THERE IS PROBABLY NO GOD, BUT OTHER LEVELS OF “REALITY” EXIST.

Theflyingsorcerer.

Actually I understand your point very well. But how you can come from “other levels of reality” to “inspired by god” is indeed confusing to me.
FYI, I do indeed believe in an “other level od reality”, but it has nothing to do with god, deity, or intelligence.

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Art is the creation of that which evokes an emotional response, leading to thoughts of the noblest kind.W4U

But how you can come from “other levels of reality” to “inspired by god” is indeed confusing to me.

That’s because I DON’T come from “other levels of reality” to “inspired by god”. I don’t come to “inspired by god” at all. I don’t believe in god, I don’t need god. I SUSPECT that there MAY be other levels of reality - none of which have anything to do with god. That’s all.

So where’s the confusion?

Theflyingsorcerer.

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“Truly I tell you, he who seeks, shall find. And sometimes, he shall wish he hadn’t.”